Ancestry
My mother, Mary Sayward Cole, was my inspiration for putting together this Cole-Sayward Family Tree, and for writing these notes. She was a supreme chronicler of family history as seen in her self-published memoir pieces – “The Bridge of Remembrance” and the collection of her poems, memoirs and short stories “A Moment Stilled.” In both cases she showed a lively imagination in re-creating family history. Among her many ring-binders of writing, was one entitled Notes on Family History. It was clear she intended to write another memoir about the Sayward-Robbins side of the family entitled “From Whence We Came.” It was to be illustrated with relevant pictures which she carefully documented on slides. My sister Diana and I converted the best of her many slides onto CD’s allowing me to put together the family tree. My husband Rodger was immensely helpful in cropping and cleaning up several images, using the french curve drafting tool, and photographing the final chart.
Click here for brief profiles of most of the people shown below.
Pilgrimage to my Grandfather's War
Over the past 20 years, I have been involved in exploring various aspects of the paternal side of the Cole family. I started with my grandfather, Major Edward B. Cole, because he was a highly decorated hero in the First World War. After my father died in 1987, my mother, Mary Cole, wrote A Bridge of Remembrance telling the story of his life together interwoven with letters he wrote home to his wife in 1918.
To commemorate the Centennial of the First World War, my sister Diana Cole and I edited our mother’s for publication with blurb.com.
Major Cole led the sixth machine gun battalion of Marines and received several medals from both France the United States for his leadership in the battle of Belleau Wood. It was the conflict that stopped the German march to Paris. In June 1918 he was mortally wounded in that battle, and is buried in Aisne-Marne American Cemetery.
As the centennial approached I sent my mother’s book to Gilles Lagin, tour guide for WWI descendants seeking information about their ancestors’ participation in the war.
As the result, in 2016 a French documentary studio brought Diana and me to France to trace our grandfather’s footsteps in France with Gilles. We were one of the three families featured in Devil Dogs: Hero Marines of WWI, which can be view through the link below:
At the grave of Major Edward B. Cole, Aisne-Marne Cemetery, Belleau Wood, France
Interview with Carolyn Kingston and Toni Tasker
In the fall of 2018 I created a power point presentation about my journey of discovery about my grandfather. My story was paired with a very different one about the grandfather of my friend Toni Tasker, who served as a private in the Army. Her search was for the French family who cared for her grandfather after he contracted the Spanish flu in 1919. The link to view this is at:
The small blue flowers, similar to violets, that grandfather wrote about in his letters
In 2018 The Centennial of WWI was widely celebrated both in France and in the United States. To commemorate the service and sacrifice of our Grandfather, my sister Diana and I created a facebook page where we posted Major Cole’s letters to my grandmother and their two sons exactly 100 years to the day after they were written. He died of his wounds on June 18.
Here is the link to visit the site.